5 Lesser-Known Charles Dickens Novels You Must Read

While the world may celebrate Charles Dickens’ birth anniversary today with re-readings of his famous works such as Oliver’s Twist and A Tale Of Two Cities or David Copperfield, we decided to tell you about five of the author’s lesser-known works of art that show the Victorian era writer at the peak of his powers.

Dombey and Son

Dombey and Son is one of Dickens’ most underrated books. The main protagonist Florence Dombey is one of the strongest female characters whose life is chronicled in the Industrial Age and how it changes the culture in Victorian England. The toothy James Carker plays a formidable antagonist in the tale that must be read by all Dickens’ fans.

Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit will make you laugh, cry and entertain you like nothing else. It is one of the most well-plotted books by Dickens that features a bitter old lady, an abusive husband, evil twin brothers, children and an innocent man spending time in jail. No wonder Franz Kafka was inspired by this tale too while its genius lies in the fact that the book’s morals could well be applied in today’s socio-economic condition as well.

Bleak House

An entire inheritance is being devoured due to endless litigation in Victorian London that is completely surrounded by fog and the characters whose lives depend on the verdict of the case. This tome of a book is almost 1000 pages long but the inter-plotting, ruined love and soaring ambitions of the characters involved in the Jarndyce vs Jarndyce case will keep you reading way past midnight to finish this novel as soon as possible.

Our Mutual Friend

Anyone remember this book being mentioned in LOST by Desmond Hume? That’s how yours truly picked up this incredible book that sees an older Dickens writing perhaps his darkest book ever. While most of Dickens’ books focus on characters without money or in need of money, Our Mutual Friend goes the opposite way and shows what people with money can do. The characters here do some real evil and vile things that shows the depths to which humans are capable of ill-treating one another even as the book features some genuinely lovely people. This is definitely one tour-de-force of a book.

The Pickwick Papers

A 24-year-old Dickens found instant fame with this comic masterpiece that had more than a faint echo of Don Quixote with Mr Pickwick in Quixote’s role and the incorrigible Sam Weller as Sancho Panza. Weller’s wit and black humour along with the plot that stretches languorously over 900-odd pages is sheer delight to the mind. Read it and be amazed!